


you are my mountain (you are my sea)

by alasse



Category: Red White & Royal Blue - Casey McQuiston
Genre: 5+1 Things, M/M, Post-Canon, Tooth-Rotting Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-18
Updated: 2019-12-18
Packaged: 2021-02-26 02:28:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,281
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21842209
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alasse/pseuds/alasse
Summary: Five times Alex and Henry have important conversations in houses, and one time they have averyimportant conversation in a castle.
Relationships: Alex Claremont-Diaz/Henry Fox-Mountchristen-Windsor
Comments: 44
Kudos: 269
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	you are my mountain (you are my sea)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ships_to_sail](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ships_to_sail/gifts).



> Dearest **ships_to_sail** , I so, so hope you enjoy this - I loved revisiting RWARB and envisioning a little bit of the future for Alex and Henry. I didn’t get emails in because I mostly made them talk, I’m so sorry about that! But I hope it’s alright regardless. HAPPY YULE! 
> 
> And, as ever, a million thanks to B for her epic beta’ing skills - all remaining mistakes are mine.

_Claremont-Diaz family home, Pemberton Heights, Old West Austin, TX_

Alex turns the lock and opens the door with a small shove - it sticks just a little bit - and leads Henry inside. He breathes in the smell of home, a smell he _craved_ , sometimes, on sleepless nights in the White House, writing papers and doing opposition research and thinking ahead, ahead, ahead because to stop or think back was not an option. 

“This is where you grew up,” Henry says, and it’s a whisper but in the quiet of the night, in the quiet of the house, his voice resonates. 

Alex shivers - there’s something so unexpected about Henry, here, Henry who was a picture in a drawer and nothing but a shiny fantasy, and Henry who is a little sweaty from the bike-ride but looking perfect and touchable and _Alex’s_.

“This is where I grew up,” Alex confirms, and steps deeper into the house, Henry following behind. 

They walk through the living room, past the kitchen - the counter filled with colorful tiles that Alex had traced over with his fingers whenever his dad was standing endlessly over the stove putting together all the ingredients for _mole_ , where his mother ate breakfast standing up as she read legal briefs - and up the stairs, passing one, two, three doors until his room. 

It's the room in the corner, the smallest but the one with the most light, and the place where Alex built himself, piece by piece. Where he tried to make sense of himself in the midst of awful puberty and a horrible divorce and the sheer reality of being a Mexican-American boy in Texas who was maybe experimenting with his male best friend in ways that weren’t quite so usual. It's where he came up with: Alex Claremont-Diaz, the brand. Charming, but with an edge; very smart, but not obnoxious about it; good at sports but not like a _jock_ jock; everyone’s friend, but nobody’s burden - everything that could lead him to Class President and Valedictorian and beloved FSOTUS and then youngest congressperson and then, and then, and then…

“This was your room, yes?”

Alex turns away from the window, tries to turn away from the memories, and focus on _now_ , on Henry - they _won_ \- and looks at that beloved, well-known face. “Yep. This is where the magic happened - the man, the myth, the Star Wars fanboy: it was all cooked up here.”

Henry smiles softly, that sideways smile that he does only with people he trusts and loves most - Alex, Bea, Pez - that smile that means he’s hearing so much more than the words said. “I wouldn’t have known what hit me, if I’d met you when we were children.”

Alex looks down at their feet - there’s still red, white, and blue metallic glitter stuck to both of their shoes. “Oh, I don’t know. I was - it was hard, back then.” He’d talked about it with Henry some, back when he called him over Christmas after freaking out at his mom and dad fighting, and at the lake that one time, but he’d glossed over some of the harder parts, sped past them a little bit to get to where he was going, as usual.

Henry takes his hand, and gently leads him to sit down on the empty wooden floor, cross-legged in the dark. “Tell me.”

Alex swallows, tries to figure out how to begin. He’s so unused - still, maybe always - to the patient focus of Henry’s attention, the sheer interest and care for the messy insides of Alex and not just the polished outside he puts on. He remembers a time when Henry told him a story, and figures out how to begin.

“A long time ago, a boy was born - he wasn’t a prince, this one, I guess he was actually a boy from the wrong side of the tracks. Brown, with a father who spoke a different language, in a state that was beautiful and huge but sometimes, still, so used to closing the door and the wall on everyone who looked like him. And he was born - he was born with a storm inside his brain.” 

Alex pauses, taking a moment to focus on Henry’s smile, his hand still holding Alex’s. “And the storm, it made him want to move all the time, and talk all the time, and keep going and going because it was so hard to rest - it was so hard to make it go quiet, unless he wrote and spoke and moved to exhaustion. It was hard on his parents, too - he asked so many questions, and wanted so many things, and when they split up, the boy thought maybe the storm inside his head had done it, too, gotten too hard to handle, had forced the entire family into a shipwreck…” 

Alex trails off, swallowing hard, and Henry squeezes his hand.

“And then what happened?”

“And then one day, the boy met the prince he’d seen in pictures only - pictures he’d seen maybe more often than he was ready to admit - and the prince made him so angry because he ignored him, but even then… even then, the prince made the storm quiet, somehow.”

Alex looks up, then, because even though it scares him he can’t not look at Henry taking that in. Henry looks levelled, the corner of his mouth dipping like he’s not sure whether to smile or cry, and Alex really didn’t mean to rake him over the coals about the Olympics again, _shit_. 

“I’m sorry, I - we’ve gone over that day, I totally don’t blame you, I’m the one-”

“No, no - hush,” Henry interrupts, leaning closer, placing a soft hand on Alex’s cheek. “I just. I thought I was alone on how you made me feel, how you affected me, for so long. And even though you took such a long time to actually get it - typical American - “

“Hey!”

“- Just. It just means a lot, that we were moving in parallel. You were helping me take off the armor, and I was helping you quiet the storm.”

And Alex can’t do anything but kiss Henry then, kiss him as deeply and desperately as the second first time by Hamilton’s portrait (he counts it like that because the drunken kiss by the tree was over too damn fast, whatever Henry thinks), and he bears down until he and Henry are lying down on his old bedroom floor, mouths warm and so perfect together that Alex feels every cell in his body light up. 

He’s Alex Claremont-Diaz, Mexican-American bisexual disaster, FSOTUS, soon-to-be law-student, quiet storm… and he’s kissing the prince of his dreams in his childhood room. _See him roar_.

+++

_Lake house, Lake LBJ, TX_

“Hey, hey - Barracuda, slow down,” Henry calls out.

Alex turns, shifting his legs, fighting the inherent discomfort of being naked outdoors. Their security has made sure that _nobody_ is around, Bea promised to distract June, Nora, and Pez, and it’s two am in the off-season, but if they’ve learned anything over the last year is that they really don’t know who could be watching. “Did you just - did you just call me Barracuda?”

Henry grins, white teeth gleaming in the humid night. “I did. June told me it was her secret weapon to slow you down.”

Alex rolls his eyes. “Jesus. I keep not loving that you two exchange tips about me, you know?”

“I know. And you know that we’ll keep doing it.”

Alex huffs out a laugh, and Henry has finally caught up to him, crowding him just slightly and leaning down for a kiss that tastes like sangria and spring, and Henry, Henry, Henry. 

They part after a moment, and it takes a second for Alex’s brain to come back online. “So, uh - why the hold up?”

Henry looks at him quizzically for a moment, before his brow clears. “Oh. Uh - I just wanted us to jump in together.”

“Oookay,” Alex says. Maybe it’s a thing where Henry is re-experiencing childhood things as a normal person and not like the prince of a country - he was mind-blown by the scavenger hunt that June had set up earlier in the day - so Alex takes his hand and gets ready to jump. “On one… two… three!”

They run the last couple of feet and leap, Henry whooping, and the water isn’t that cold since it’s a Texas spring, but it’s still a shock to the system. 

Alex notices after a second that Henry hasn’t let go of his hand - hasn’t let Alex swim too far from him at all - and looks up, words dying in his mouth when he catches sight of Henry’s face. He looks nervous but determined, chin thrust forward. 

“Henry? Are you okay?”

“I am,” he replies, pulling Alex a little closer with one hand, his other hand going behind his neck. “I just wanted to say… just needed to say. Alex, I love you.”

And it hits Alex, then. The lake at night, the moment they almost had but didn’t. That moment when Alex was about to put it all on the line and Henry left... Henry’s changing it. Making it better. They’ve said I love you to each other many times since, enough that Alex has lost count, enough that he’s learning to count on it. But it’s so like Henry - so much the intrinsic, impossibly kind part of him, that he wants to erase this hurt for Alex, however much in the past now. He feels tears building behind his eyes, because _Jesus_ , this boy. This boy.

“Oh, sweetheart,” it escapes from his mouth like an exhale, like a blessing. “I love you too. Forever.”

And Henry smiles, and Alex’s heart - his entire self - it feels so entirely full of joy, it’s like he’s floating away with the cicadas in the air. 

+++

_Henry’s brownstone, Brooklyn Heights, NYC_

Alex almost rips the door open in his haste to get inside the house - he’s late, he’s so late, Henry freaks out so much when he’s late - and calls out, “Babe? I’m home!” 

It’s a bit of a joke but also dirty pool because Henry always melts at any reference to the fact that they’re pretty much playing house, and Alex hopes it’s enough to let him explain that his International Law professor went off on a weird tangent again and Alex got sucked into it and they wound up arguing - or, well, debating, or having a lawyerly discussion, _whatever_ \- until about forty minutes after class was supposed to end, but come on! Anyone could have expected Alex to have strong feelings about US non-compliance with International Court of Justice decisions, particularly when they’re about not executing Mexicans who didn’t receive proper consular assistance, and particularly when the main non-complier is Texas! 

He loves his home state to his bones, but it doesn’t mean he can’t hate it sometimes, and argue strongly against its historical stubborn stance on compliance with international law, precisely because he knows one day he’ll work his damndest to change it. But anyway - the point is, they were supposed to be having dinner with some bigwigs that Henry is trying to woo into donating to the shelter, and Alex is so late. 

A suspicious silence answers his call. 

“Henry?” Alex calls out again. Henry is usually mind-numbingly punctual - he genuinely agrees with and repeatedly quotes that Cinderella reboot phrase about how punctuality is the politeness of princes - so something is wrong. After continued silence, and feeling increasingly worried, he pulls out the big guns. “Sweetheart?”

Finally, Alex hears a faint “here” coming from the basement, and he drops off his back-pack and coat in the living room before going downstairs to investigate. As he walks down the small stairs down to the basement, he begins to notice that the floor of the basement is, well. A complete mess. Totally soaked, with clumps of soap bubbles floating in various puddles, and Henry… Henry is sitting down in the middle of the wet floor, holding what looks like an irreversibly shrunken wool sweater. 

“... Henry? Are you okay?” Alex asks, holding back laughter.

Henry looks up, and he looks so genuinely miserable that Alex’s mirth takes a backseat to his need to make that face go away, and he immediately kneels in front of Henry, feeling the water soak the knees of his jeans and not giving a damn. 

“Hey, hey - it’s okay. What happened?”

“I just - you mentioned this morning you wanted to wear your blue wool sweater to dinner, but I remembered you wore it last week and it got splattered with some mud and I noticed you were running a tad late and didn’t want to bother you in the middle of class so I thought I’d just go ahead and wash it, and... and I just mucked it all up. I washed it and then something happened and water came out everywhere, and then bubbles, and while I was trying to deal with that, I put the sweater in the drier but then remembered it _couldn’t_ go in the drier, so I took it out and tried to soak it in cold water to stretch it out again, but it isn’t working, and. I just. I ruined it.”

Alex is aware he’s staring at Henry a little open-mouthed, but the torrent of words is just so, so unlike him, and he looks so totally mortified over fucking up _laundry_ , of all things, a basic rite of passage for every person on Earth (Alex and June ruined a favorite dress of their mom’s and have a very serious blood-and-spit pact to never, ever, ever speak of it again because their lives would be forfeit).

“H, it’s okay. I’ll just, I’ll wear another sweater, babe, don’t sweat it. And we can clean this up when we get back from dinner, okay?”

“No, it’s not okay!” Henry exclaims, gesturing a little and accidentally hitting Alex with the soaking wet sleeve of the sweater. “I just - how can I pretend to be running the shelter and the charity and ask these people for money when I’m not even capable of washing a blasted sweater?!”

It hits Alex, then, that this is kind of like the time he called Henry in the middle of the night to freak out over a couple of turkeys, but also that the sweater is probably metaphorical. He places careful hands on the side of Henry’s face, and meets his eyes seriously.

“Henry. Everybody fucks up the laundry, once in a while. You’re not less capable or some sort of impostor because you shrunk a sweater, okay? And, even if it’s not about the sweater, if it’s about somebody saying something or writing something about how you only have the charity because you’re a prince or whatever -” 

Alex sees then, in Henry’s eyes, that he’s gotten close to it, and prays to Mexican Jesus that he can say this how he needs to, “- then fuck them. Fuck them, sweetheart. Because, yeah - maybe it was Pez that signed it over, but he didn’t do it because you’re a prince. He did because you’re _you_. Pez isn’t an idiot, H. Probably you being a prince was a minus, honestly, but the fact that you’re so hard-working and thoughtful and brave won him over. And what you do for those kids every day, the fact that you show up with your chin thrust forward and ready to battle for them, that’s what matters. Not the sweater. Okay?”

And Henry’s mouth trembles just a little, but then he nods, and Alex smiles and he smiles back, like the fucking sun shining through the clouds, and fuck. Alex is so lucky.

“So. How about you go pick another outfit for me, and I’ll just mop some of this up and join you in a sec, alright?”

“Okay,” Henry says. Then, after a pause, “Thank you, Alex.”

“Hey - always.”

Henry nods and goes upstairs, and as Alex starts mopping he thinks that he could get used to this. To stupid screw-ups with laundry and maybe one day with the radiator or the fridge, to sharing enough of a space with Henry that they can have these domestic problems and also keep helping each other through the bigger ones. He really feels like he could do this always - help Henry through both the real and metaphorical sweater shrinkages - and all he can do is hope and keep hoping that it’s something he can look forward to and not longingly look back on, that Henry feels like always too, even when it gets tough.

+++

_Casa Azul, Coyoacan, Mexico City, MX_

Walking through the _Casa Azul_ always makes Alex feel like he’s gone back forty years in time and wandered into some totally crazy dream, a riot of multi-colored tile, massive ferns, monkeys climbing ancient trees, and xoloitzcuintles barking somewhere by the pyramid garden. The effect is heightened by the fact that, unlike those summers when he was a kid and his dad or his _abuela_ brought him here and the museum actually had other patrons walking around in jeans and sneakers, this time the place is essentially empty, except for Henry, Alex, and the curator. 

This is Henry’s first time in the museum - his first real visit to Mexico City, outside of a one-day visit when he had to represent the UK in a climate change summit a few years ago - and Alex is determined to show him the Mexico City that his father showed him, full of art and food and insane traffic and unexpected rain, a true _chilango_ experience, because he finished law school and they are going to damn well celebrate. 

They’ve already spent more than a few days walking around downtown, driving their combined security totally crazy because, well, it’s never easy to navigate some of the most transited streets in the world, let alone when the prince of a nation and the son of a foreign president are involved, but you can’t really _do_ downtown Mexico City from a car. Henry was gratifyingly mind-blown by the Museum of Anthropology, charmed by Chapultepec, and in love with the various restaurants they’ve stumbled upon in Roma and Condesa, and due to Alex and his dad’s long-distance careful steering, Henry has mostly been able to avoid Moctezuma’s revenge.

Today, though, Alex declared it would be Coyoacán day and, thanks to the ever awesome powers of Zahra, they were able to stop by the Frida Kahlo museum - the _Casa Azul_ \- before it opens to the public. Alex is totally aware that Zahra did it to keep Shaan from getting an early coronary, but he’ll take the win. 

The curator takes them around the entire museum, painstakingly explaining the various paintings being shown and which of them are reproductions or are simply not on show at the moment, because Frida Kahlo has become such a world-wide phenomenon at this point that at any given moment, there is a show with her paintings somewhere in the world. She and Alex have a fun time trying to translate the various messages scrawled on the walls from Frida to Diego - love notes, some more irrelevant lists of what to buy for dinner - and they let Henry have his space when he examines Frida’s bedroom, the painted cast she wore around her entire torso for a long while because of the streetcar accident she was in as a young woman which never, ever healed right.

“She must have been in so much pain all the time,” Henry murmurs.

“She was,” the curator confirms. “We actually - we don’t have it here, it’s in the Dolores Olmedo museum in Xochimilco, which is absolutely worth a visit if you like Frida - but one of the most impressive and expressive paintings she has is _La Columna Rota_ , the Broken Column, which is a self-portrait showing just how utterly painful it was for her, to have such a broken down body when she was still so young… it’s harrowing. And totally beautiful. Like most of what she painted.”

Henry nods, and they keep walking slowly through the rest of the house, until they come to the end. The curator takes her leave - probably has way more important things to do than walk around the place with Henry and Alex - and they thank her profusely before she goes. 

“So, your father brought you here when you were young?” Henry asks once they’re alone, as they start walking towards one of the doors back out to the garden.

“Yeah - June and I. We would come down in the summers, almost every year, to visit my abuela and my uncles and cousins, and my dad was determined that we wouldn’t spend the entire time eating _churritos_ and watching cartoons in Spanish - even though I made a very clear argument about how that would lead to practice-by-immersion of the language…”

“I’m sure you did,” Henry chuckles.

“I did! But my dad was not impressed. So he took us to different museums every other day, and this one kind of became my favorite,” Alex says. 

Henry looks at him for a moment. “Why this one?”

Alex looks at him quizzically. 

“No, I mean - it’s beautiful, I can absolutely see why it could be anyone’s favorite,” Henry says. “But with her clothes on exhibit, the kind of things she painted… I’m curious why it was your favorite, rather than maybe June’s.”

Alex smiles slightly. “Yeah, I mean - badass painter who did things her own way and dressed fabulously for a lot of it does kind of sound like June’s track more than mine. But, I don’t know. Maybe even back then there was something inside me, something I wasn’t ready to really consciously think about, let alone verbalize… I was so fascinated by Frida’s utter commitment to life. She was in so much fucking pain, and yet - she dressed how she wanted to, as a woman, as a man, she loved who she wanted to, and she painted what she was feeling, down to her bones, with no shame, even when it wasn’t fashionable or well-seen.”

“I can understand that,” Henry answers. They stop by one of the gardens, breathing in the cool air of the morning - it’s early enough that there’s a chill in the air because the sun hasn’t yet properly hit the grounds.

“My favorite painting of hers has always been _Las Dos Fridas_ ,” Alex continues. “I remember being all of six or seven years old and staring at it open-mouthed, totally entranced. My dad explained it to me, and much later, with the divorce and all the pressure I felt to be a certain way just so I wouldn’t get stopped at the door because I was this brown Mexican-American kid trying to be one of the faces of youth leadership… I kept thinking of that painting. Of a Frida who is free and comfortably brown-skinned and full of life quite literally having to give over her life-blood to the Frida who has to be proper and well-dressed and, well. Whiter.”

“Oh, Alex…”

“I don’t know, H,” Alex shrugs, bending down to pluck a bougainvillea flower blossom, and twirling it in his fingers. “I’m a JD, and I’ve worked on congress and presidential campaigns, and I’m your boyfriend and people seem to listen when I speak… but sometimes I still feel like all the other things I am, and that I love - being Mexican and being bisexual and being on the more neurodivergent side of things and being an intense uncompromising shithead - I have to suppress them or only use them to feed the part of me that is palatable and easy." Alex pauses, trying to figure out how best to say what bothers him. "Like - I can talk about my roots and how proud I am to be from a mixed family and give a couple of interviews in Spanish, but god forgive I actually rant about how stupid it is that people are all up in arms about the gay Zapata painting because I might accidentally torpedo the free trade treaty negotiation between the US and Mexico.”

Henry takes the flower from Alex’s fingers and slowly, ever so carefully, places it in Alex’s hair. “Roots are complicated things, love. We both come from wonderful places, which are also terrible places. And I don’t think we’ll ever have to stop negotiating where and what we come from with what we want for ourselves and for our countries and for this world… I don’t think anyone does. But for what it’s worth, I think you’re doing an extraordinary job. And on those days when you need to be the other Frida, Alex, when you need to rant and scream and not put on any sort of face - I’m here to listen.”

And Alex has to kiss him, because how can he not, kiss him hard enough that Henry clutches him back and the flower falls from Alex's hair and to the ground. 

After they leave the museum, they go for coffee to _El Jarocho_ and Henry burns the roof of his mouth (“I can’t even taste the coffee, Alex! It’s too hot!” “Hey - this is part of the Jarocho experience, okay? If you don’t burn your mouth, you’re not doing it right.” “I’m absolutely certain that is somehow wrong, but my Spanish isn’t nearly strong enough to argue you out of it. Also I need ice.”) and they keep walking through Coyoacan, hand in hand. Some people gawk, but most of them smile, and a lot of them don’t even notice. And that - that feels like enough.

+++

_White House, DC_

On the White House roof, tucked into a corner of the promenade, there’s a bit of loose paneling right on the edge of the solarium. And today, on the very last day that his mom is President, on the last day that Alex can call this place home, he’s taking a moment to breathe here, in this corner that feels secret, even if it’s really not. His work providing legal aid to asylum-seekers and migrants with RAICES has been amazing, and he’s also been able to pitch in with legal counseling at Henry’s shelter in New York, but for so long he’s been so sure he’d be back in the White House, that he’d eventually go right ahead and follow in his mom’s footsteps. However, in the very temporary quiet of the morning - he’s pretty sure Zahra will send out the National Guard if he doesn’t get back inside and report for their painstakingly scheduled-to-the-second day - things feel much more uncertain.

He pulls out his phone, guiltily ignoring June’s text asking where he is, and texts Nora.

_likelihood of a bisexual mexican-american with a foreign royal bf being president in the next 20 yrs?_

After a few seconds, he gets:

_hmmm. 25-30%? could be much higher but while a lot people love your face and henry’s and also when you smash your faces together, they really don’t like dynasties._

Yeah. Alex figured. He might not get to call this place home again, and it kind of hurts to face it, in the way that letting go any close-held dream hurts. A buzzing sound interrupts his train of thought, and he looks down to see Nora has texted again.

_also are we still using bf? you guys have been together for over four years, shouldn’t we move into like significant others or soulmates or drift compatible jaeger pilots?_

Alex snorts, but has to, as ever, admire how Nora can easily follow the line of his anxieties from one issue to the next. It’s not just his employment future he’s pondering, he’s also wondering exactly how forever looks like for Henry and him. If these past four years have taught them anything is that they can do it - they can live together, cook together, fuck up laundry together, go on holiday together, but that they can also be apart when they have to, when Henry has to go on tour for his charity and Alex has to go down to the border for asylum hearings for weeks at a time. He’s just not too sure how to turn that certainty into a concrete way forward, and his lists have ended up looking like something from _Royal Insider_ instead of something actually useful. 

(Can royals be husbands of American politicians and also do their royal jobs?  
1\. Maybe, but the scandal!  
2\. Are Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson relevant? Were they in love or Nazis? Or both?  
3\. That random Dutch prince quit, right? Oh shit, he was forced to quit ‘cause he married without permission. Would Alex need to ask Catharine or Queen Mary? Is he… ready to ask?)

Before he can try to compose a sure-to-be witty and withering retort, the solarium creaks slightly and Alex cranes his neck to see Henry climbing out of the window and onto the roof. He looks very unusually awkward - his legs are a little too long - and Alex feels this intense and crazy fondness which never, ever goes away, because, gah, he gets to see Henry look ridiculous. 

“Alex? Darling, you out here?”

“Over here,” Alex replies. “Out of curiosity, if I hadn’t been, what would you have done?”

“Well, obviously perished in grief and shame over the fact that my foolproof guess regarding your whereabouts was wrong, and haunted the White House solarium for the rest of time,” Henry replies, deadpan. 

“I would expect nothing less,” Alex agrees solemnly.

“No, my next stop was the kitchen,” Henry says. “If not climbing to the roof and giving Cash and Amy recurring nightmares of broken shingles and caved in ancient panels, it would be just like you to move your Helados habit to the early morning and create some havoc.”

“I actually tried that first, but the freezer was already emptied out,” Alex confesses. 

“Ah. So - may I ask what drove you to roof-level meditations?”

In answer, Alex hands over his phone, his text conversation with Nora open. The marriage hints are a little embarrassing, but he truly is feeling anxious about his future in general and Henry and him are part of that future, without a doubt.

Henry reads it over quickly, and then looks at him for a moment, those blue eyes taking in every bit of Alex, even bits Alex isn’t aware he’s showing. 

“We’ll figure out, love,” Henry finally says. “We’ll keep stepping forward, one day at a time, and maybe that percentage will change, or maybe it won’t need to, because we’ll figure out another way to change things.”

“But for every step forward, sometimes it just feels… it just feels like three are taken back,” Alex says. “Like we move forward an inch and everyone freaks out, so we have to go back a fucking mile.”

Henry smiles ruefully. “I know. And I know it’s exhausting. But we just have to step forward so strongly that we shake the world enough it can’t go back to the shape it was. And we’ll do it together, in whatever way that needs to look like for both of us.”

“Yeah?”

“Yes,” Henry affirms. “Now - where is this secret message passed from first children to first children via unseemly vandalism?”

Alex shifts slightly and moves the panel to show Henry the _Rule #1: DON’T GET CAUGHT_. 

“Marvelous,” Henry breathes out. “D’you think - could you write something, maybe? Or is one defacement of the roof the limit?”

He looks so intrigued and excited, that Alex has to say, “You write it.”

“What? Alexander! Your forebears - your namesake! - would probably burn you alive for that suggestion! Letting a British royal deface the American President’s house…”

Alex shrugs, smiling. “We’re making new roads, baby.”

Henry huffs out a laugh, shaking his head. “You are unbelievable.”

As Henry digs out a Swiss knife (which, why is he even carrying it around? Is it possible he intended to make this defacement happen one way or another? Henry Fox-Mountchristen-Windsor, always hidden depths), Alex looks out into the White House lawn and beyond it, the Capitol.

The thing is, it’s not about coming back to the White House, it’s never been about that. It’s about believing, down to his bones, to his every fiber, that it’s worth it to live a life trying to make things better, to change this world, even if you fail. It’s in the trying. And what he finally lets himself trust is that there are different ways to change the world; truly myriad ways to change the world, lists and lists and lists that Alex can write with Henry and June and Nora and Pez’s help. There’s Board of Education elections and city councils and mayoral races and prosecutor elections and community organizing, which isn’t giving up on his dreams, it’s just finding other ways to make them come true. And allowing yourself to change when something like love - something like Henry - shows up… Alex has to believe that it can change the world in and of itself.

Alex leans closer to see what Henry scratched into the panel, and when he reads it, he can feel himself smiling big enough that his face can hardly contain it.

_Rule #2: IF YOU GET CAUGHT, MAKE SURE IT’S WORTH IT_

+++

_Balmoral Castle, Royal Deeside, Aberdeenshire, Scotland_

Alex tiptoes out of his room - the note Henry left said to meet him on the “flowered paved walk”, whatever that means - and practically runs into Shaan.

“Shaan! Uh. Good evening. I’m… totally not doing something weird.”

Shaan looks at Alex for a second, takes a deep breath, and lets it out. He really is so attractive, and so onto Alex’s shit. 

“Quite. I understand Prince Henry may have left you some written instructions? While I commend his doubtless well-meaning intentions, I do fear the entire point of the encounter might be missed if you were to spend the next four hours wandering around Balmoral and scaring the staff,” Shan says. “So perhaps you will allow me to lead you?”

And, well. Even though Alex isn’t sure what precise “encounter” Henry has planned - last Christmas at Sandringham they had a midnight snowball fight which Bea won through very serious underhandedness - the man has a damn point.

“Lead away,” Alex says. 

They walk through the echoing corridors and exit on what Shaan informs Alex is the north side of the castle, which, sure, Alex can totally identify that just by the position of the stars or the scent of the air or whatever. Shaan ushers him (the polite British way to shove, Alex has learned) out to a terrace which is entirely lit up by fairy lights and candles. And Henry - Henry is standing in the middle, dressed in a fucking three-piece suit, and hell, Alex is in a goddamned _Gryffindor sweatshirt and flannel pants_.

It hits him, then, what this is, what it could be. And suddenly he can’t quite breathe.

“H?”

Henry smiles - tremulously, nervously. “Alex. Could you - could you come here?”

Alex walks forward, almost in a daze, until he’s directly in front of Henry, and Henry takes his hand. “H, what-”

“Let me, let me just say this, alright?” Henry asks, and he still looks sort of petrified, but he breathes in and then thrusts his chin slightly forward when Alex nods. “Alex - Erich Fromm said that love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence. Of course, he was talking about how key it was for people to truly love and help other people, to be there for one another, but… I also feel that he meant it at the individual level. Because it’s true for me. Without Bea, without Pez, my mum, even Philip… I wouldn’t have survived my father’s death. But the me I am now - what I’ve dared to do and become, and what I want to keep becoming, it wouldn’t be without you. So much of my life, Alex, I've felt like a problem. But if I am a problem, I am so damned fortunate that you are my solution.”

Alex is crying, now, desperate to kiss Henry and tell him he isn’t any sort of problem, he’s brilliant, he’s the most perfect fucking thing, but he can hardly process taking in air, let alone speak, and there’s no way he’s interrupting Henry. 

“And, Alex - Alexander Claremont-Diaz,” Henry continues. “I can’t think of anything that would make me happier than becoming who I want to be next to you, and helping you become who you want to be, for the rest of my life. Will you marry me?”

As Henry pulls out a small black box and opens it, showing a thin, beautiful silver ring - probably Taxco silver, which means that his father and Rafael were involved, those sly assholes - Alex thinks that there’s still a lot to figure out, things they’ve been working through for months. Exactly when and how and whether Henry can actually show up for the fundraisers and events for Alex’s Austin City Council candidacy, precisely how tailored and limited Henry’s royal schedule can be so he can actually be effective and ensure his charitable duties work like they’re supposed to, what role Alex is or is not expected to have in the royal duties, where and how they’ll split residences…. 

But even with all of that, there is only one answer Alex can give. It was an answer foreshadowed by his realization, years ago, in the lake house, the answer he gave his mom when he had to come clean, the answer he gave the world when he refused to hide or diminish what they were to each other when they were outed. 

“Yes. Forever.”

**Author's Note:**

> Specific references in the Casa Azul section are as follows:  
> 1\. [Xoloitzcuintles](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican_Hairless_Dog), otherwise known as Mexican Hairless Dogs, with a significant ancestry - Aztecs owned them - and much loved by Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, and Dolores Olmedo.  
> 2\. [La Columna Rota](https://historia-arte.com/obras/la-columna-rota)  
> 3\. [Las Dos Fridas](https://historia-arte.com/obras/las-dos-fridas)  
> 4\. “Gay Zapata” painting, in fact [La Revolución](https://www.instagram.com/p/Bx1Sn17FFQV/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link) by Fabián Chairéz, which has indeed caused an unfortunate - and very homophobic - maelstrom of protest. You can read some of the artist’s thoughts in [this](https://www.npr.org/2019/12/11/787244533/nude-pin-up-style-portrait-of-emiliano-zapata-sparks-protests-in-mexico-city) NPR article.
> 
> Also, of course, the very first sentence in the White House section is directly from RWARB.
> 
> Title from [Mountains](https://open.spotify.com/track/46TYFL4P1M2Bm3qvpvQsGg) by Biffy Clyro, because I love them and could not resist “love will last forever between you and me” for Alex and Henry.


End file.
